Hackers threaten to take Pokémon Go offline August 1 with massive DDoS attack

Poodlecorp (yes, you read that right) has threatened to take the über popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go offline August 1 through a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the game’s already fragile servers.

“We take the servers offline because it is popular right now and nobody can stop us,” @xotehpoodle (a member of the Poodlecorp group) said. “We do it because we can, nobody can stop us and we just like to cause chaos. We chose August 1 so we have time to relax and not care about doing anything.”

The group plans to take the servers down for 20-plus hours — “basically an entire day” — using the same method they’ve used on other attacks Poodlecorp has laid claim to — a massive botnet consisting of 600,000 devices ranging from DVRs to dedicated servers.

Aside from the attack that caused server issues for the game last Saturday, Poodlecorp has also claimed responsibility for hacking various YouTubers and the League of Legends servers using the botnet — a tool xotehpoodle claims is worth more than Niantic Labs, the developers behind Pokémon Go.

Poodlecorp, of course, isn’t the first group of hackers that have made big claims and then failed to follow through, but xotehpoodle warns that this time it’s different, “because we made a promise.”

Why they’d want to take down servers for a game that has brought joy to millions around the world is beyond me, but in the digital world, I guess “because we can” is a good enough reason.